End of Lake Erie? Asian carp could spell its doom

[Spiel]

End of Lake Erie? Asian carp could spell its doom

Voracious species may have gotten past barrier and into Great Lakes

 

 

Monday, November 30, 2009

Spencer Hunt / www.dispatch.com

 

 

Jack Tibbels built his life and livelihood along the Ohio shore of Lake Erie, offering a marina, a motel and a fleet of six charter boats to people eager to catch walleye and perch.

 

Now, he fears that his business in Marblehead and those of hundreds of his charter-fishing competitors around the Great Lake will sink.

 

"If the Asian carp get in here, we'll all be out of business," Tibbels said.

 

Tibbels' fears, which are shared by conservationists, scientists and government officials, appear closer than ever to reality with news that the voracious carp appear to have slipped past a Chicago-area electric barrier meant to keep them from the Great Lakes.

 

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Jeff Skelding, national campaign coordinator for the Healing Our Waters Great Lakes Coalition, said these fish pose nothing short of an ecological disaster for the lakes. "If we let the Asian carp into the lakes, it could be 'game over,' " Skelding said. "There's nothing that can stop them."

 

The Great Lakes are no stranger to invasive species. Experts estimate that more than 185 species of fish, mussels, plants -- even viruses -- that hail from Asia and Eastern Europe are in the lakes system, choking out native species.

 

Jeff Reutter, director of the Ohio Sea Grant program at Ohio State University, said Asian carp could quickly become Erie's most-destructive invader and would join a list that includes zebra and quagga mussels and the round goby, a small fish from the Caspian and Black seas that out-hustles native fish for food.

 

The Asian carp problem began in Illinois in 1993 when floods along the Mississippi River helped them escape from nearby fish farms.

 

The fish typically grow to 2 to 3 feet long and weigh 3 to 10 pounds, but some have topped 50 pounds. The carp eat most of the food that native fish rely on.

 

Asian carp are almost the only fish that researchers can find in many sections of the Mississippi and Illinois rivers, Reutter said.

 

State and federal officials installed two electrified barriers in 2006 in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal west of Chicago. The barriers worked until Nov. 21, when officials said that stream tests beyond the barrier found Asian carp DNA.

 

Chris McCloud, an Illinois Department of Natural Resources spokesman, said his agency will search the stream to see if it can find areas infested with Asian carp. "We have to find out exactly what we are dealing with," McCloud said.

 

What would happen once fish are found is not clear. One option involves dumping a fish poison called rotenone into carp-infested areas.

 

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources will closely follow developments, said Ray Petering, the state's fish management and research chief. "There's nobody with a bigger stake in this than us here in Ohio," Petering said.

 

Erie is the shallowest and warmest of the Great Lakes and is home to more than half the lake system's fish.

 

Thousands of people are drawn to Erie, spending an estimated $1.1 billion a year on lodging, travel and food, for the chance to catch walleye, perch and other sport fish.

 

Tibbels said the carp would undoubtedly change his life.

 

"They would just about destroy this lake," he said.